Yes, the Nymph promo is separate from the main game and With an Inner Light. It includes one character (the Nymph), one event card (Metamorphosis), and one artifact (Hallowed Seed). The publisher gave BoardGameGeek a temporary exclusive on it as part of an advertising deal. As I said, BGG has recently ordered more so it will presumably be reappearing in their online store in the near future (I believe they were charging $5 plus shipping).

By the way, we're now doing internal testing on the second expansion. There will probably be a public call for beta testers some time this month or next.

My copy of the expansion and the promo are in the mail! I'm excited, and I've actually been getting to play this game a lot lately. For some reason, the theme grabs people who otherwise avoid games of this "heaviness". I'm thinking of getting involved in the next playtest, although I should really wait until I know what actually is in the first expansion.

In my recent play, I have hit some stumbling blocks that I thought I'd mention. A few might be addressable through the expansions, but others really can't be fixed without doing a 2nd edition. Anyway, here goes:

The Blights

Zombies, Skeletons, Shades. People get really confused about when they are fighting a monster and when they are fighting the blight, and are constantly wanting to destroy the blight when they win an end of turn thing. This seems to afflict zombies the most, for some reason. I think it would be better if there were more than one letters distinguishing the "zombies" blight from the "zombie" monster. If a 2nd edition ever happens, I'd recommend something like Zombie Horde, Skeletal Patrol, and Shade Army.

Corruption has a lot of interactions that are either poorly defined, or simply very unintuitive. The big offenders are the Seer and the Acolyte. It feels like Corruption in the forest should prevent anyone in the forest from benefitting from Prophecy buffs, but as long as the seer herself is elsewhere, I think she can still buff. I would assume that she can't activate prophecies while in the corrupt zone, even on distant targets.

I'm legitimately unsure how the Acolyte's power is meant to work. It's a bonus that grants blight immunity going up against a blight that cancels bonuses. Currently, I'm ruling that if the Acolyte activates it while in another location, and then travels to a corrupt zone, his power cancels the corruption along with the other blights and he can both ignore blights and use other bonus powers for the rest of the turn. I am also ruling that the Acolyte cannot active his power if he is already in the corrupt location.

Also, corruption is just not a very impactful blight. Several characters only have one bonus power, that isn't even basic, and many of those are one-shot rather than ongoing anyway.

Prince and Scholar

I don't know how, physically, their location-modifying powers should be played. The obvious thing would be to put the power card on the board, but power cards are ridiculously huge relative to locations. I've taken to tucking the power card partway under the board with the text sticking out, although you can't do that with the village.

Maybe a future expansion could come with blight-sized power tokens to indicate the presence of chapels and sanctuaries?

The spacing problem gets even worse if you're stacking location powers, which you probably are. Putting Scouts and the Chapel in the same place is very appealing, as is Scouts and the Safehouse. For the Scholar, I seriously think the optimal strategy is to put all 4 defenses in the same location (unless you have manipulated your deck such that you can use treasure chests to put the counterspell in the monastery). That's kind of boring as well as physically challenging.

Characters

The Rogue, the Knight, the Acolyte, and the Priest are very well designed. Their abilities drip theme, they do their jobs well, but they have notable weaknesses. They have really interesting interactions internally to their kits, like the priest's Intercession/Benediction, but also each have a few powers that are not super exciting so that after a few good draws, you feel like getting on with winning.

I rarely use the Prince or the Scholar due to the physical problems. The Prince looks, eyeballing it, fine. The Scholar is probably too good with stacked defenses. I would consider making him work like the Ranger, and have each power deploy to a pre-specified area rather than to his current location.

The Seer has a really distinct playstyle, cool internal interactions, good interactions with other characters and generally some very neat mechanics. My only beef with the Seer is that she feels like easy mode.

Wizard and Druid feel clunky to me. They are the main reason I'm posting this, because I would like to avoid this problem in future expansions. Runes and Forms share a couple of traits that bug me. You can only benefit from one at a time, it takes a full turn to switch (barring Celerity), and the basic power is arguably the best one. This leads to some not-great feelings situations. If your wizard starts with Rune of Nullification, then any of the other runes are practically dead draws. I would never spend a turn to switch from Nullification to Clairvoyance, and probably not to switch to Interference, since my team has probably put themselves in position where they NEED the Nullification. That means the wizard player has a nearly 50% chance to draw something he doesn't want from a treasure chest. Fortunately, the wizard's three other basic powers are good, so when not randomizing start powers, I play lightning/invis/teleport and cast the first rune I draw.

Druids are better off in some respects. Tree Form is useful even if you already have an animal form. More useful, in fact. And Celerity is really cool when you get it. But Sprite form is incredibly good. So good that I feel like I'm crippling myself if I don't take it, and so good that I almost never want to spend a turn changing to wolf or raven. If you're just searching, Sprite probably keeps you in the field as long as wolf does. If you're attacking blights, Sprite is as good as wolf if you're attacking confusion or unholy aura. Raven's search bonus is nice, but unless it's early game it's often not worth losing a search turn to transform, especially since Sprite form cancels spies and black fog. Extra movement range is nice, but in the two turns it takes to shapechange and fly, you could just walk.

The big downside of Sprite form is that it doesn't protect you if the necromancer shows up. But, instead of spending an action to change form, It's nearly always better just to spend that action moving somewhere else. I feel like the only time I would use Wolf and Raven is if the necromancer de-activated sprite form instead of suppressing it.

I did try to word the Corruption's rules specifically to clarify that it blocks bonuses originating at its location rather than targeting its location. There is, unfortunately, no really clean way to deal with two abilities that each are designed to nullify abilities of the other's general class. Hermit might just get an explicit override written in one way or the other.

Orion wrote:

Also, corruption is just not a very impactful blight. Several characters only have one bonus power, that isn't even basic

Technically, I believe only the Wizard fits that description.

I suspect you may have a bad sample; fully one third of all the (non-artifact) powers in the base game are bonuses (less if you limit yourself to basic powers, but still over a quarter).

Orion wrote:

Wizard and Druid feel clunky to me. They are the main reason I'm posting this, because I would like to avoid this problem in future expansions. Runes and Forms share a couple of traits that bug me. You can only benefit from one at a time, it takes a full turn to switch (barring Celerity), and the basic power is arguably the best one.

I am already planning some changes to unreleased heroes with similar mechanics to try to minimize this issue in various ways. I will be interested to hear how you feel about the Nymph.

Also, it's interesting that you didn't lump the Knight into this group.

There were three criteria: that you can only benefit from one modal power at a time, that it takes an entire turn to switch, and that the basic one is good enough to leave on the entire game.

The Knight's fails on both of the latter criteria. Two of his oaths have fulfillment bonuses that allow him to change stances without wasting a turn. Furthermore, all of his oaths shut themselves off eventually, which gives him a chance to switch to a newly acquired oath without being penalized. This is why Tree Form works, because it's function is such that you will want to deactivate it. It's also why sprite form would work better if it deactivated itself at some point.

Edit: I am genuinely curious how you personally implement the prince and scholar power cards.

Edit: what if shifting winds included some events or quest rewards or something that allowed you to discard a power to draw a new one? Or if anyone could do so as an action at the monastery?
The biggest offender I remember from the old set was the Enchanter. His basic essence was so good that he was a powerful pick, even though everything else he got was disappointing. By contrast, Channeler was always very popular in my group. It sounds like the Monk in Witl might be a channeler remix? I'm very excited to see how scout and ranger turn out, as they were two of my favorites. Crusader, as well.

Edit: I really liked the play test Nymph, so I'm looking forward to seeing what you've done with it. The printed versions of all the classic heroes are better than the originals, so I expect it will be good._________________STEAM: Orion.anderson
A Broken SkyIdentity Crisis

Last edited by Orion on Sun Sep 29, 2013 5:53 am; edited 5 times in total

I can certainly see reasons why you'd feel differently about the Knight; but during development I had many of the same concerns about the Knight that I did about the Wizard and Druid, so it's interesting to know what worked for you and what didn't. It'll also be interesting to see if you feel any differently about the Wizard after the second expansion (more types of blights means each type is less common, which is probably a de facto nerf to Rune of Nullification).

When a card goes in a specific location, I generally push it right/left towards the outer edge of the board, sometimes hanging off the edge. For the Village, I tend to put a card so it covers up the left half of the Village (if I get two quests there at once, I line any blights up vertically down the center and put one card on each side). If I get multiple power cards in a location, I frequently stack them so they're only partly visible--I have all the effects memorized.

The second expansion actually does have an item that allows replacing one of your current powers, though in the current draft it's pretty rare (similar to artifacts in the base game--though artifacts are actually becoming somewhat more common). The event card that comes with the Nymph promo can also do that (but the power you lose is random).

There have been no renamed versions of old heroes so far; anything you see with a new name is a new design. The Monk's trick is a special resource system that lets him use stronger versions of his regular powers. The Enchanter is still reserved for a future expansion or promo, but I'm considering powers that would let him switch between Essences more easily and/or allow him to use more than one Essence at a time. (Though even in the original version, he has a power that deactivates his current Essence when he uses it...) And, of course, there will probably be balance tweaks all around.

Last edited by Manxome on Sun Sep 29, 2013 8:46 pm; edited 1 time in total

We've used up most of the interesting stat lines for monster blights. The only new "straight numbers" I can think of is to run a reverse Vampire--something dangerous to ignore but easy to destroy, like a "Young Lich" Blight with 5 strength, 5 awareness, but only 3 might. Other than that I think you would need to use alternate loss conditions. You probably can't do scout monsters because that's just Spies, but worse. So maybe a Looters blight or a Vile Messengers blight.

There's an obvious slot for Forbiddance, the blight that prevents you from using action powers, to complement confusion and corruption. Although I suppose it should really start with a "c".

That brings up the possibility of running blights that deny ordinary actions. Shroud is the closest you can get to disabling attack, and taint is pretty similar to disabling curse, and spies is similar to disabling hide. Dark Fog exists, so disabling search is nothing new. Disabling relic acquisition is way too specific. The best I can come up with is a "Maze" blight that prevents heroes from moving out of the Mazed location. I suppose you could also add a "Miasma" that prevents power from being refreshed. Actually, that would be a good addition to the list of Monastery blights.

There should probably be a new "global" blight to complement Desecration. All I can think of it a Great Eye that drains secrecy from all heroes until someone destroys it. Or makes everyone draw 2 events per turn.

So that's my list: Young Lich, Maze, Forbiddance, Miasma, Looters, Vile Messengers, and Great Eye. That's a 50% increase over the base game, so maybe that would be enough._________________STEAM: Orion.anderson
A Broken SkyIdentity Crisis

I got my Nymph today. The Chicago Post Office declared it delivered on Saturday and actually delivered it today, which was interesting._________________STEAM: Orion.anderson
A Broken SkyIdentity Crisis

I got my copy of WAIL. It's fun. I ran one solitaire game with just base rules. There still seemed to be a good number of quests. Most of them were pretty easily solved, but at least it broke up the search spamming a little. I immediately fell in love with the Shaman, although her totems are actually my least favorite of her powers. I'm struggling to really get the Paragon to work for me, but the others are very satisfying._________________STEAM: Orion.anderson
A Broken SkyIdentity Crisis

The Monk is not that awesome, in my opinion. I have trouble justifying him if I'm picking for power.

I'm going to take a moment to congratulate myself on my predictions for new blights. Web is a lot like a forbid travel blights, gate is similar to the global secrecy drain, and Oblivion, like the proposed Looters, works by exhausting powers. Forbiddance, Vile Messengers, and Young Lich didn't happen at all, while Crows happened even though I said it wouldn't. I didn't see Revenants coming because I didn't know it was allowed to make anything strictly stronger than existing blights.

EDIT: Also, I figured out the paragon since my last post, and I'm pretty happy with him. I guess I could complain about the fact that the "0-aura" build is a design failure, but I don't care because I like it anyway._________________STEAM: Orion.anderson
A Broken SkyIdentity Crisis

Last edited by Orion on Tue Jan 13, 2015 6:27 am; edited 2 times in total

I found with the Monk that the Chi empowerments - specifically the one that Activates when the Event is significantly-rated - were really useful.

The ability to select (successful) search results and the free travel Chi abilities were the ones most-used. I felt like the Monk had the most tools in his chest compared to the other archetypes I saw (Druid, Rogue, Champion, Paragon... a few others).